The development of health and safety legislation places an increasing burden on the management of restaurants, food processing businesses and the like, to ensure that their staff wash their hands properly and frequently. It is well-known that soap is essential for hands to be properly washed. This is recognised in the design of the "Wash `n` Rinse" product sold by Wash `n` Rinse Inc. of Bethlehem, Pa, USA which comprises a hygiene station including soap dispensing means, means for generating a soap signal indicative of the dispensing of soap and a totalizer which is incremented in response to soap being dispensed. The totalizer provides a record of the total number of hand-washes with soap which may be used by management of a restaurant, food processing business or the like, to monitor the hand-washing activity of its staff.
It is desirable to ensure that each member of staff is washing his or her hands with the required frequency. It has been proposed that users be required to enter a code, either manually or using a swipe code, in order to activate the station. However, this has the disadvantage that the keypad or card reader becomes a vector for cross-contamination. Furthermore, the need to enter a code is a marginal disincentive for staff to use the apparatus.